Planned outages during second quarter could tighten Europe's olefin market

10:23 AM MST | January 17, 2013 | Francinia Protti-Alvarez

The European olefin market will see 2.9 million m.t./year of steam cracker capacity enter plant turnarounds between March and June 2013, according to IHS Chemical data. These shutdowns, in addition to a fire that caused the 740,000-m.t./year Naphtachimie cracker, a joint venture between Ineos and Total at Lavéra, France, to shut down on 22 December, could potentially result in a tighter market, IHS Chemical says. “While the incident at Lavéra has not been reported to have had much structural impact on the market, it has resulted in an increase...